The Road To Glory [EN]: Chapter 191

# 19 This Works

When he opened the door, Halo stopped, startled.

“Haeli, you’re home? You’re early.”

Noh Hae-il’s mother, Park Seung-ah, also seemed surprised. It was still before sunset. She hadn’t expected him home this early.

Halo awkwardly waved at his mother, who nodded slightly in return.

Then, he looked up, hardly believing his eyes.

Noh Hae-il’s mother, who was always neat and elegant, wasn’t so neat today.

Especially around her eyes, where her makeup seemed smudged, with black clumps smeared around them.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“No.”

The conversation cut off abruptly.

The guitar slung over his shoulder felt heavy, as if scolding him.

“Is that so? That’s good. I haven’t made dinner yet, so there’s nothing to eat.”

*Was Noh Hae-il’s mother seeming strange today because his feelings towards her had changed?*

Halo was about to break the awkward silence when he opened his mouth.

“About what I wanted to say-”

“Mom has something to say-”

The voices overlapped.

As they both closed their mouths at the same time, the living room fell silent.

The two, yielding to each other to speak first, were clearly mother and son.

“Hae-il.”

Noh Hae-il’s mother broke the silence.

“I got a call from your homeroom teacher.”

“…”

“She told me about your final exam scores.”

“!”

The grades were supposed to be announced on Wednesday.

Bad news struck while he had things to do.

He hadn’t known they would tell the parents in advance.

“She said there seemed to be some mistake on your math test. It was marked as all 3s [indicating the lowest possible score] from beginning to end. She asked me to confirm if that’s what you did.”

“Did you do that?” In response to the question, Halo nodded.

“I did.”

“…Why?”

“I just couldn’t solve them.”

Park Seung-ah closed her mouth at Halo’s answer.

*Was she going to get angry?* He remembered how much she valued grades.

“Why couldn’t you solve them?”

But her voice was still monotonous.

Halo was about to say he simply didn’t know how to solve them, but stopped himself. It seemed strange for Noh Hae-il, a model student, to say he didn’t know.

Noh Hae-il didn’t answer.

Park Seung-ah smiled faintly, looking at his crestfallen face.

“Hae-il, Mom has something to tell you.”

Halo raised his head abruptly.

The situation wasn’t good.

If left like this, the conflict would surely deepen.

“Just a moment.”

Halo interrupted Park Seung-ah,

“I have something I want to say first.”

He thought he couldn’t delay any longer.

“Please listen to me first. So-”

He looked around.

Nowhere decent to sit.

There wasn’t a suitable place.

“Let’s sit over there.”

He roughly pointed to the long sofa in the living room.

Park Seung-ah, following Halo’s gesture, nodded unexpectedly readily.

“Okay.”

#

He took out the acoustic guitar.

In fact, this acoustic guitar didn’t seem that high-end. The finish and melody were lacking; this guitar was strictly for amateurs.

So, a perfect performance would definitely be impossible with this. But perhaps a perfect performance wasn’t necessary. Noh Hae-il would have definitely played it with this guitar.

Now he completely understood Noh Hae-il’s intention.

If he made another mistake, he wouldn’t be Halo.

Halo engraved in his heart that this song wasn’t for a lover, but for his mother, who wanted him to take a safer path.

Of course, with a different intention, the sound would inevitably change.

Halo strummed the strings and soon opened his mouth in front of the person Noh Hae-il loved most.

He hoped Noh Hae-il’s sincerity would be conveyed to his mother.

#

Park Seung-ah controlled the surge of emotions.

But her eyes were already glistening.

Contrary to Halo’s misunderstanding, she didn’t feel like getting angry at her son.

Of course, she was shocked when she received the news about his grades, but she didn’t want to get angry at her son, not today. Maybe she would hate her son in a few days.

But not today.

Her heart felt heavy.

She had already heard this melody before.

The YouTube video Noh Hae-il secretly uploaded.

Many people who saw the video said it was romantic, but she realized who this song was for.

The protagonist of the video was singing for her again.

Not in a video, but right in front of her.

With a warmer and more beautiful song than the video.

When the second verse ended, Noh Hae-il put down the guitar.

It was lovely how he was waiting for her reaction.

Park Seung-ah unknowingly approached her son and hugged him with a warm smile, just like the lyrics her son had written.

She couldn’t help but cry at the song that said, even if he took a different path than studying, he was still loving her and didn’t want her to hate him.

“Do what you want to do.”

She said, suppressing her emotions.

“You can do whatever you want.”

Her stiff son twitched his head.

She hadn’t realized it.

Hae-il had a different talent.

At least, she couldn’t oppose him singing so happily and being loved by so many people.

Even if he regretted it someday, how could she scold and pressure her child when he made and sang such warm and beautiful songs?

She was thrilled watching YouTube. She wanted to shout it out to everyone right away. How much had she endured while watching the adoring comments?

*He’s my son. Everyone, listen to how pretty my son is, how well he sings.*

“Mom is on your side.”

#

‘This is strange.’

Halo thought it was strange as he looked at himself sitting at the dining table, eating. *When did he move? When did he start eating?*

And why was Noh Hae-il’s mother looking at him with a pleased expression, putting side dishes on his spoon?

More than that, Halo hadn’t expected it to really work.

When Park Seung-ah approached after listening to the song, Halo suspected she was going to hit him, but he stopped thinking at the warm embrace.

And the words he heard.

‘Do what you want to do.’

The words Noh Hae-il had wanted so much.

‘Why is this so easy?’

The song was just to create an atmosphere.

Still, he thought he should appeal to Noh Hae-il’s mother’s maternal love and then persuade her.

For example, a vision for the future that adults would like, a life plan, a resolution, something like that.

But despite such preparations, permission came early. Halo couldn’t believe it.

‘Could it be that they would have allowed me if I had sung a song too?’

Actually, he didn’t think so.

In the first place, it wasn’t an atmosphere to sing a song, and the song he sang wasn’t blues like this.

If he had screamed in front of his devout father, he probably would have grabbed his neck and collapsed.

‘Is it just because she’s a different person from them?’

Noh Hae-il’s parents weren’t Halo’s real parents.

Halo looked at Park Seung-ah and put a spoonful of rice in his mouth. The ham grilled in the frying pan was salty and delicious. The sprinkled ketchup added flavor and, above all, went well with the rice.

‘Anyway. I succeeded.’

It went as Noh Hae-il wanted. It was unsettling because it ended more smoothly than he thought, but he succeeded because he heard the answer he wanted.

He hadn’t even met Noh Hae-il’s father, but he felt like a heavy stone had been removed from a corner of his heart.

‘Are you okay?’

Halo asked Noh Hae-il, who was somewhere.

He couldn’t hear the answer, but he thought he would be satisfied.

At least if he got to see his mother sitting across from him.

*Had he ever felt so comfortable at home?*

Even just this morning, it was as uncomfortable as someone else’s house.

“Is it delicious? Should Mom grill you more Spam?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t refuse. Because it was the most delicious sausage he had ever eaten. Park Seung-ah got up smoothly and headed to the gas stove.

“Oh, right. Bring that friend home sometime.”

“Friend?”

“The new friend you made, what was his name, Junsu? The nice friend who dropped you off last time.”

“Ah, Jang Jin-soo? Yes. I’ll bring him.”

“You’ve been going around with that friend all this time, right?”

“Yes.”

The friendly conversation continued.

Halo rested his chin on his hand, looking at Park Seung-ah’s back.

This was the ending Noh Hae-il wanted. He was just a third party here, but he felt strange.

#

Meanwhile, at ENS Broadcasting Station in Mapo-gu, Seoul.

Inside the conference room with the nameplate [Show your show S.3], groans and screams were heard.

The employees passing by with coffee flinched and scurried away, and the staff, knowing the story, passed by with pitiful glances.

Inside the conference room.

From the PD [Producer-Director] to the youngest writer, they stared at their laptops, twisting their bodies as if they were about to die. Stumbling.

Someone put down a paper cup. The coffee from a once-luxurious coffee shop was no different from poison to them.

“Ugh…”

The zombies, their eyes bloodshot from the monitor’s light alone, filled this place, a hellscape spread out on earth.

“It’s almost lunchtime, isn’t anyone eating lunch?”

“What lunch? We have to turn in the first results because the broadcast date has been moved up.”

PD Gu said irritably. He couldn’t help but be angry because he had to finish the first screening, which had been relatively relaxed—not really—in three weeks. If the program that was supposed to be in the existing time slot hadn’t been canceled due to the cast’s drunk driving, they wouldn’t have had to handle it so hastily.

“Ugh, still, we’re doing this to live. Yeah, let’s eat lunch and then do it.”

How much more of a loss would it be if one of them was taken to the hospital again? It would be even more embarrassing to be diagnosed with malnutrition in the 21st century. Not even in Africa, but in Seoul, South Korea, which is always in the top 10 in GDP [Gross Domestic Product]!

“Hyung-jin, go buy Egg Drop [a popular Korean sandwich].”

“Can’t we get something else?”

“What, do you want to eat cup noodles?”

“I’ll go.”

PD Gu then opened the window and refreshed the atmosphere.

“Well, are there any decent kids?”

“It’s always the same. Auditions are always the same. Like an hourglass.”

“That’s right.”

The good ones are incredibly good, and the bad ones are so bad that you wonder how they can be so bad. As always, audition survival applicants were divided into extremes.

“Oh, by the way, have you seen the ordinary person who’s become a hot topic on YouTube?”

“YouTube? Out of the blue?”

“I was just trying to cool off my ears for a bit, and it showed up in the algorithm.”

“If Writer Kim is saying this, is he that good? Did he apply to our show by any chance?”

“If he had applied, I would have visited his home right away.”

“What? Is he that good? But if it’s a home visit… is he a minor?”

At the hint to show him, Writer Kim went to YouTube. It remained at the top of the recent history.

“He’s a real gem. He would have been perfect for our show. I wonder how hard it is to contact him.”

Writer Kim was sincerely disappointed. *This beautiful picture. He could really pull it off. Why didn’t he come out?*

The PD reacted blankly to the video Writer Kim showed him. *How good could he be?* He thought he was just a well-singing ordinary person.

“What, Let It Be? You can barely call this singing well with just this…”

But 10 seconds passed, and 20 seconds passed, and the PD’s words didn’t continue. Greed flashed across his eyes. The writer smiled as if she had expected that, of course.

“…He really didn’t come out?”

“Yes, I already looked it up. Just in case.”

He didn’t have outstanding looks, but he had star quality. *Can’t you see that just by looking at people’s expressions?*

“Didn’t he appear on another show?”

“I’ve already contacted them, but there are no audition shows featuring ordinary people that are about to air.”

“Are you sure he’s an ordinary person? Isn’t he affiliated with an agency somewhere?”

“I don’t know about that.”

It was possible that he was a trainee about to debut.

However, if that were the case, more information would have been released.

There was no way the agency would miss this marketing opportunity.

“Why did you show me this? It just makes me feel drained.”

“I just didn’t want to be the only one feeling disappointed.”

“Writer Kim, did I do something wrong?”

“Hmph.”

Bringing her to 쏘유 [Ssoyu, a Korean expression of being fed up or annoyed] in the first place was a mistake. Writer Kim sneered and looked through the folders. In the folders where the 合格 [pass] and 不合格 [fail] were already divided, the 보결 [reserve] folder caught her eye.

This contained ambiguous kids.

They didn’t have the skills to pass, but they were a little too good to throw away.

However, what made it difficult to fail was-

“He’s failing?”

PD Gu, who made the judgment right away, wondered why he was told to listen to this. PD Gu, who only listened to the acapella rap, tilted his head at the rapping that had nothing special.

But Writer Kim didn’t care and immediately pressed the video next to it. This time, it was a video with MR [music recorded].

‘I’m not expecting anything at all.’

The nervous young face had no star quality, no charm, no source, and no skill.

However, what made it difficult to fail-

“Oh?”

The beat that came on then.

PD Gu closed his mouth like before.

He nodded, saying it wasn’t bad.

The rap that felt bland came to life.

It was a well-made beat.

Besides

“!”

The hook that was soon heard.

“Huh?”

Crazy.

It was screaming that this was his charm.

PD Gu’s eyes widened at the unexpected twist.

“This… are you sure it’s his own song?”

“Yes, I’ve confirmed it.”

His mind changed.

With this much songwriting sense, his lacking skills didn’t matter. The pronunciation and rapping were problems that could be fixed with training. This seemingly ordinary kid was worth picking just for this songwriting sense. Even a middle school student. The source about a young genius passed through his mind.

“This works.”

“Then I’ll pass him.”

Writer Kim nodded calmly. One video in the 보결 [reserve] folder went into the ‘合格’ [pass] folder. They would be contacting them all soon.

Along with the announcement of the second audition, the first filming would begin in two weeks.

Two days later, Jang Jin-soo, who received the call, cheered. Jang Jin-soo, who received a lower score than Noh Hae-il, who marked all the answers as 3, was jumping around, and the homeroom teacher lost his words.